The Strategic Linguist Podcast

The Strategic Linguist
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Revealing how language shapes power, markets, and competitive advantage | Expert analysis from workplace dynamics to global strategy thestrategiclinguist.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    Damned Either Way: What Robin Lakoff Discovered About Women’s Language

    “Stop hedging,” a manager says, in the kind of feedback session that gets called constructive, “and just tell me what you think.” He isn’t asking her to clarify her level of confidence in the recommendation. What he actually means here: stop giving yourself an exit. Commit. Say it like you mean it. That’s the workplace definition of hedging, and almost everyone in professional life is using it, I’ve heard it a thousand times: skirting the question without really answering, refusing to land on an answer when you’re unsure, protecting yourself from being wrong by never quite saying anything wrong with pretty words that evade real knowledge. It gets coached out of people in leadership training. It gets flagged in performance reviews as a confidence problem. It is treated, consistently, as a synonym for evasion. In this post, we’ll be looking at hedging from a social lens: * Why hedging isn’t evasion. It’s a fully formed claim with its confidence level attached — more information, not less. * What is the double bind? Hedge, and you’re read as unsure. Don’t hedge, and you’re read as difficult. Same content, opposite penalty. * Two different Lakoffs, two different questions. George named the hedge. Robin named what it costs the people expected to use it. * Why no register is safe. The framework doesn’t teach you how to speak — it teaches you to see the filter running. * Finally, for my Linguistics Lab members why the pattern doesn’t start in a performance review. It starts years before there’s a job on the line. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Aug 11

    Right, According to Whom: What Foucault Discovered About Discourse and Power

    A rightsizing announcement. A rejection for "culture fit." A promotion panel that decides someone doesn't quite have "leadership presence." Three sentences that sound like observations about the world. None of them are — each one is manufacturing the standard it claims to be reporting on. This episode is about Michel Foucault's account of power: not power as the thing that says no, but power as the thing that produces the categories you get filed inside, and teaches you to keep watch on yourself once it has. What's covered: Why Foucault broke with the "sovereign" model of power — the king who forbids — and argued the more effective form of power produces rather than represses How discourse manufactures categories instead of describing them, worked through three ordinary workplace phrases: "rightsizing," "culture fit," and "leadership presence" Foucault's three-stage mechanism — surveillance, judgement, normalisation — and how the panopticon shows up in badge-swipe logs, Slack status, and nine-box grids Why the mechanism doesn't cost the same for everyone: who gets to speak in the unmarked, authoritative register, and who has to supply an account of themselves Why Bourdieu is almost never far behind Foucault in this newsletter — what linguistic capital explains that Foucault's account leaves open, and how the two close the loop together Nancy Hartsock's feminist critique of Foucault: what happens to the possibility of resistance when power has no single author and no subject exists prior to it This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Aug 4

    Why No One Takes a Position Alone: What DuBois Found in The Stance Triangle

    This breakdown of DuBois’s stance triangle includes understanding: The three things every stance does at once — evaluate an object, position the speaker, align with whoever’s listening — whether anyone in the room notices or not What a single word like either is doing grammatically that “I agree” alone never could, and why it isn’t optional The difference between going first in a room and being right in a room — and why they get treated as the same thing Why sycophancy is a trained stance pattern, not a character flaw — and what it shares with how the models everyone’s currently arguing with learned to agree with you Where the vocabulary of confidence (hedges, boosters, certainty) ends and the interactional machine underneath it begins This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Aug 1

    What I'm planning to build for The Linguistics Lab

    Honestly, my plan was to come on here for 15 mins to talk you through what I’m planning to build for my paid tier and so many of you turned up! Just me. A few notes and one question, what do you need from me? Thank you Viktoria Verde, PhD, Des Kennedy, Cristina Lozano Argüelles, Steve [Sage-Outlaw-Caregiver] and many others for tuning into my live video! I still want to hear from you about how I can better support you with my work—write me a comment below to get the conversation started This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    What I'm planning to build for The Linguistics Lab

  5. Jul 28

    Written As If Watched

    Before I start, there are many, many posts that have most of my arguments already written. I am late to this party but I brought snacks now that the good food has been eaten. I will spare you, and me, the need to repeat so I will stick closely to linguistics. I’ve also written at length about a lot of what is here, so if you’re new know that what is in here sits in my other 100 posts and if you’re not new here, you’ll see the same frameworks applied to a new use case. I’ve written recently about how linguistic imperialism impacts non-native speakers. While I won’t be using that argument here, this argument includes anyone who uses tools to help them write: a dictionary, a thesauraus, spell check, a LLM. You do not have to be a non-native English speaker to need the use of tools to write and put your ideas on paper. LLMs didn’t change that. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jul 21

    The Currency You're Born With: What Bourdieu Discovered About Language as Capital

    The Currency You're Born With What Bourdieu discovered about language as capital Two equally qualified candidates sit the same interview. Only one of them was born speaking the accent the panel already trusts. This episode is about what Pierre Bourdieu called linguistic capital — language as an inherited asset that converts into hiring decisions, promotions, and credibility, whether or not anyone in the room ever calls it capital at all. What's covered: Why linguistic capital is inherited rather than earned, and why it only works while it stays invisible The trap of personal explanation: why "more polished" or "just has presence" is always the wrong level of explanation — the variable doing the work is positional, not personal Why medical and legal jargon isn't automatically exclusion, and the real distinction between a register built for precision and one that's become a price of entry How the same linguistic capital converts at different rates depending on who's spending it, and what seniority, race, class, and gender have to do with who set the standard in the first place Where Bourdieu's ideas of legitimate language and symbolic violence come from, and why IELTS is the clearest live example of both What Michel Foucault adds: the test doesn't just measure competence, it manufactures the category This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 14

    The Politeness Machine: What Brown and Levinson Actually Discovered

    Someone tells you, calmly, that they’re giving you your time back. Someone else, mid-story, asks: “can I stop you there?” A third person, cornered on a specific and documented harm, tells you it wasn’t their intention. A fourth hedges an idea they’ve been sitting with for three weeks: “I might be wrong, but...” Four different rooms. Four different speakers. Four sentences that sound, on the surface, like nothing at all — procedural, generous, careful, uncertain. None of them are doing what they sound like they’re doing. There’s a fifty-year-old framework that explains all four, and most people who use it correctly have never heard its name. It’s called politeness theory, and the first thing to understand about it is that it has almost nothing to do with manners. We’re looking at sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropolgy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Jul 7

    Fluent Enough to Pass: The Standard That Was Never Neutral

    You walk into an exam room. The test is supposed to measure whether you can use English. The writing section: write a 250-word essay on “the advantages and disadvantages of online learning.” You have 30 minutes. Introduction, thesis statement, three body paragraphs, conclusion. Grammar correct. Vocabulary recognisable. Structure clear. Linear. You write it. You score well. The test confirms it: you are “proficient.” Three months later, you’re in a university classroom. A professor asks what you think about a reading. Your classmates interrupt mid-sentence, build on each other’s ideas, speak over the edges of sentences. You wait for your turn. You construct a thesis. By the time you finish your setup, the conversation has moved on. Later, a colleague asks you for something you need to turn down. You give a clear, direct no, the way the test trained you to write and speak. Your colleague reads it as blunt. Something in the relationship breaks—but your accuracy is flawless. The test never measured your capacity to do either of these things. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

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Revealing how language shapes power, markets, and competitive advantage | Expert analysis from workplace dynamics to global strategy thestrategiclinguist.substack.com

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